We present rotation periods for 71 single dwarf members of the open cluster NGC6811 determined using photometry from NASA's Kepler Mission. The results are the first from The Kepler Cluster Study which combine Kepler's photometry with ground-based spectroscopy for cluster membership and binarity. The rotation periods delineate a tight sequence in the NGC6811 color-period diagram from ~1 day at mid-F to ~11 days at early-K spectral type. This result extends to ~1 Gyr similar prior results in the ~600 Myr Hyades and Praesepe clusters, suggesting that rotation periods for cool dwarf stars delineate a well-defined surface in the 3-dimensional space of color (mass), rotation, and age. It implies that reliable ages can be derived for field dwarf stars with measured colors and rotation periods, and it promises to enable further understanding of various aspects of stellar rotation and activity for cool stars.
@article{arxiv.1104.2912,
title = {The Kepler Cluster Study: Stellar Rotation in NGC6811},
author = {Søren Meibom and Sydney A. Barnes and David W. Latham and Natalie Batalha and William J. Borucki and David G. Koch and Gibor Basri and Lucianne M. Walkowicz and Kenneth A. Janes and Jon Jenkins and Jeffrey Van Cleve and Michael R. Haas and Stephen T. Bryson and Andrea K. Dupree and Gabor Furesz and Andrew H. Szentgyorgyi and Lars A. Buchhave and Bruce D. Clarke and Joseph D. Twicken and Elisa V. Quintana},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1104.2912},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
13 pages (aastex 12pt preprint style), 4 figures, 1 table, accepted for publication in ApJ Letters